The monument to a Soviet soldier who is holding a German girl in Berlin is known throughout the world. However, few people know that the idea of creating this monument is based on real stories that happened during the Great Patriotic War.
The hero of one of the stories is Trifon Lukyanovich. Boris Polevoy, a war correspondent for the Izvestia newspaper, became a witness of this feat, which reflected the courage and humanism of the Soviet soldier. At the end of April 1945, during the last battles in Berlin, during a temporary lull before the start of the assault on another house, a woman came out into the street with a child in her arms. The woman was almost in the middle of the street when a machine-gun burst was heard from the German side and she, without letting the child out of her hands, fell down dead. After some time, the soldiers heard the cry of a child who crawled around the killed mother and cried so that the frost passed over the skin of even those who had seen many soldiers.
And then a soldier got up from one of the shelters and crawled towards the child. It was Senior Sergeant Trifon Lukyanovich.
Lukyanovich went to war from the very first day. He took part in the Battle of Stalingrad, the battles for Moldova, and after being wounded, he was dismissed for being unsuitable for service on medical grounds. Then Lukyanovich went home to Minsk, where his relatives remained. However, there was a vacant lot on the site of his house. As he learned from neighbors at the beginning of the war, the house was destroyed by a German shell, and the family - his wife, his two daughters and his mother-in-law - perished. His father, mother, and younger sister were killed for links with the partisans.
Having lost all those close to him, Lukyanovich caught up with his division and asked the command to leave him. Upon learning of the tragedy, he was allowed to stay.
And so the soldier reached the crying child, took the girl and crawled back. However, it was inconvenient to crawl with the child in his arms, and he got up and, holding the girl to his chest, ran. When he almost reached his own, a shot sounded from the Germans. Lukyanovich only managed to transfer the girl into the hands of Soviet soldiers.
The wound was fatal, and Lukyanovich died in a military hospital five days later.
The hero of another story was Senior Sergeant Nikolai Masalov, who saved a German girl from under fire on April 30, 1945.
Promotional video:
The 79th Infantry Division was stationed at the canal, behind which were the positions of the Germans, defending the main communications center. For some time before the start of the decisive attack, silence reigned on the positions. Suddenly, the soldiers heard the crying of a child. Senior sergeant Nikolai Masalov, who was the regiment's standard bearer, asked the commander to allow him to cross the mine-strewn area and save the girl under the cross fire of machine guns.
He found her under a bridge, sitting next to her murdered mother. The girl was no more than three years old. For a long time without hesitation, he grabbed the girl and ran back. The girl started screaming and the Germans began shelling. Masalov shouted that he had a child in his arms and asked to cover him. Running to the location, he handed the child over to the headquarters.
A year and a half after the end of the war, Marshal Voroshilov proposed to perpetuate the memory of the soldiers who died in Berlin with a monument. Treptow Park was chosen as the site for the memorial, where about 7 thousand Soviet soldiers were buried. The marshal shared his idea with the sculptor Evgeny Vuchetich.
Vuchetich offered several options. One of the options involved the creation of a monument to Stalin, holding in his hands the hemisphere of the Earth, or Europe. Inspired by the feats of the Soviet soldiers who saved German children, Vuytich showed the project for a monument to a soldier holding a German girl in his arms. In the other hand of the soldier was a PPSh submachine gun. Stalin liked the second idea, but he said to replace the machine gun with a sword that cuts a swastika.
Anna Ponomareva